Arrived in a pretty jet lagged state to New Zeland.
It struck me as being similar to landing in Ireland, kinda grey, and misty and green....a "grand soft day" as we might say! We got a hostel just off Queen st in the centre although it had that air of an old folks home about it and there wasn't much going on there at all. Had a little stroll around that evening and the place just seemed really dead for a Sat evening. There was nobody in the shops and very few on the streets. Everything looked nice adn new adn clean but if felt like it was really lacking something. Anyway we struggled to stay up as long as we could but eventually caved in at about 8pm completely wrecked.
The next couple of days we spent trying to get our barings and come up with a plan of attack for our travels in NZ. We visited a few sights around the city, the Kelly Tarlton Marine centre which had a collection of sharks, huge rays and penguins. The aquarium was built in a disused sewer drain, it had a glass tunnel with a conveyor running through it so you could jsut stnad there while all the marine life was swimming over your head...pretty cool. We also did the Sky tower , supposedly the tallest building in the world, and got a good view of the city. We were tempted to do the sky jump which involves jumping off the top while harnessed between two wires. We watched one guy do it but they stop you a couple of metres down for a photo which kinda takes the buzz out of it.
The highlight of our touristy things was probably the Auckland Musuem, three floors of exhibitions. Loads of Maori artefacts, a really brilliant earthquake and volcano exhibition and then the war memorial. You could easilty spend abtou 3 days there trying to absorb all the information, there was a lot of interactive stuff as well which made it a bit more bearable than most museums. It was interesting to learn that the whole of New Zealand is just a bit of a time bomb, We'd never realised how volcanic the place really is, it would probably make me a bit nervous if I was living here! So once we had the touring done, we booked ourselves a "spaceship", its a converted people carrier, bright orange and in your face! This was going to be our home for the next few weeks......we could hardly wait!
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